4 Ways Ecommerce Website Design Can Increase Conversion Rate and Sales

4 ways ecommerce website design helps conversion rates

Ok, I want to you to do a little experiment with me real quick. Are you ready? Good. Now, close your eyes and count to 8. Yep, just 8 seconds. Count them. I’ll wait.

Good job. Now, that eight seconds is how much time you have to grab your E-commerce visitor’s attention and keep it. After eight seconds the majority of your website visitors will leave. They’re gone. See-ya. Adios. Sayonara. Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out. What’s worse, is a lot of those website visitors are off to your competitors

But here’s the thing: most of you aren’t taking advantage of the information out there to improve our conversion rates.

Business owners- this means you’re not taking advantage of information that will help you land those sales! While part of the problem is that this online marketing industry is relatively new to most businesses, the other part of the problem is there’s so much information out there that it can be a bit overwhelming.

Worry not, we’ve got your back. We’re going to go over what you can do with your website to increase your E-commerce sites conversion rate and sales. We’ll even provide you with some numbers and visuals, because we’re cool like that, on how much of a difference these changes can make. It gets pretty mind blowing, so we’re excited to get to it.

1. Clarity with your offering

You MUST be clear in what you’re offering, and WHY your website visitors should choose you over the competitor. We cannot emphasize this enough. When customers land on your homepage or landing page, you want it to almost feel like a slap in the face. Like that first sip of darn good strong coffee in the morning.

An excellent example of this is PayPal’s home page. Just take a look:

website design clarity

With more and more people buying online, there’s risk involved. The risk of online shopping causes worry in shoppers, and PayPal knows it. By using PayPal, you are protected! There’s a clear service that almost anyone wants, and then you’re sent to a call to action right away. This brings us to the number two thing you can do:

2. A call to Action (CTA)

A call to action is what it sounds like- calling people to take action on your website. That includes clicking buttons like, “learn more, buy now, or get my freebie.”

Having a call to action strategically placed on your website’s homepage (and throughout) is vital to increasing those conversions. If your customers last the eight seconds you have to capture their attention, you want them to have easy access to a call to action. Almost annoyingly so.

It’s important with call to actions to be intentional in your not just your wording, but where you place the call to action. The absolute best way to even KNOW what these would be is run A/B testing. Trial and error. Look at the numbers and see what changes increase call to actions. Though a simple strategy, it’s an effective one.

For example, changing “See Prices” to “learn more” could increase conversions drastically. Give it a try and see what happens, it can get pretty fun to watch and compare the numbers.

For a good example of this, Hubspot shared a case study where a company increased conversion rates by a little over 109% just by changing their call to action strategy. You can read that case study here.

3. Know your perfect customer

Though it sounds obvious enough, you would be surprised how many business owners, when we ask, have no idea who their “perfect” clients are. What we mean by, “perfect client” is the demographics of the website visitors that almost always convert into customers. A BRILLIANT example of this is the coffee company, “Black Rifle Coffee Company.”

Just look at their branding and E-commerce site:

branding and ecommerce

It’s subtle, but also very clear who their perfect client is NOT. They aren’t after the Starbucks Hipsters that filtrate most coffee shops.

It’s clear these coffee masters are after the gun toting, freedom loving fighters. They know exactly who their perfect client is, who their “target” audience is. They know that their conversions have come mostly from gun toting men that are veterans (or currently active duty), conservative, and lover of all things freedom. Don’t believe me? Just look here:

know your perfect client


Do you see that they even SAY, “to the conservative customer?”

Talk about knowing that perfect client!

So- to know your, “perfect client” just look at the metrics of ads and your website. Narrow in on the demographics of people that always convert and buy.

4. Attention Grabbing Headlines

Our society’s focus has become increasingly harder to grab hold of. Shock, awe, and that wow reaction are hard to come by. That’s why most E-commerce sites will need a perfect headline- a headline that drives curiosity and desire. In the shortest words possible, you want to tell your potential client why, what, when, and where. But you can’t tell them everything, so you need to make them curious and leave them wanting a bit more all the while making them feel safe even to inquire more.

Here is one of my favorite headlines right now:


This headline for UpWork.com is perfect. This headline does three major things:

it speaks to something all business owners want which is good reviews and ratings.
It also provides a solution to the biggest problem business owners face
And then it makes signing up easy and stress-free!

I cannot love this headline and homepage enough. It’s perfection in every way. Even the picture is perfect because you’re just so happy for Dan and you want to be Dan!

So pick a headline for your landing pages and E-commerce sites that make clicking that call to action irresistible.

All this headline talk begs the question, “how DO I pick a good headline?” Our favorite answer to that questions is once again the A/B testing method. For a much more detailed rundown of how to do A/B testing be sure to check back on our next blog. It’s going to be a good one.

In the meantime, remember that you can make these simple design changes to your E-commerce site and it will drastically help convert those visitors into customers!

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